


Strange Bed, Strange Bedfellow

by lily_rainn



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Hades - Freeform, Other, Post-Ancient Rome Sidequest (Rusty Quill Gaming)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:54:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28840479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lily_rainn/pseuds/lily_rainn
Summary: Sasha’s relationship with death didn’t used to be this complicated. It used to be easy, the same as everyone else’s – dying is bad. Try not to.Some musings on Sasha and death, and how they feel about each other.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 17





	Strange Bed, Strange Bedfellow

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to write a full developed thing about Hades!Sasha at some point cos she's neat but first I had to get some vague thoughts out of my system so here's this
> 
> Title from Fast As I Can by Erin McKeown

Sasha’s relationship with death didn’t used to be this complicated. It used to be easy, the same as everyone else’s – dying is bad. Try not to.

But a few months have changed her. Sasha has died, been brought back to life, had a disease that inched her slowly towards undeath, and then been pulled back from that brink. And now she’s here, flung back to the far-distant past to die centuries before she was even born. So yes, it’s a bit more complicated these days.

Honestly, it’s not even like she’s flirting with death at this point. It’s more like death won’t stop flirting with her.

It doesn’t scare her, especially. Maybe it did at one point, but Sasha stopped thinking about death like that a while back. It was a year after Rome fell, after Grizzop died, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that she ought to mark the occasion. She’d been imagining him floating around, adrift in a sea of dead souls where nothing ever happened, and she couldn’t imagine anything worse for him. He must be so lost, and she hated to think of him directionless like that. The first time she lit a candle for him at the temple she thought of it as a beacon, a way for her friend to orient himself in the nothingness.

The priests had told her about the Celestial Hunt. He wasn’t lost. Artemis had a place for him, a home, they’d said. That was comforting to know.

It wasn’t just for Grizzop’s sake, though. Sasha has been skirting death for a while now, orbiting it, staring into it, and looking away before it could take her. In all of that, it had never felt to her like a void of nothingness. What she had felt was the relentless drag of gravity. Like it wanted her there, like it wouldn’t quite be complete until it had her back. Like it knew her, and she knew it.

It was going home.

But going home to who? She didn’t have a home with Artemis, or Poseidon, or Aphrodite.

She had to do a little research for that one, not something she was used to. Most gods, it turns out, claim only their faithful, their dedicated, their champions. Makes sense, she supposes, and she’s glad that Grizzop is among that number. But there is one god who counts all of the dead as his faithful. Hades makes a home for any and all in his halls, apparently.

Hades wouldn’t exactly have been her first choice. It’s not that she thinks he’s evil exactly – she’s had her doubts about that for a while. It’s just that she can’t even think of his name without thinking of the black cowled figures that stalked her and her friends, the figure that had spied on them in Cairo, that she remembers attacking with a fury and desperation that had rarely overtaken her. The _hatred_ she’d felt… she’s supposed to spend eternity with people like that?

So yes, it’s complicated. Still, beggers can’t be choosers. Hades’ afterlife is still going to be better than being lost in a sea of nothing, so she’ll take it. She’s not in any hurry to get there, though.

She isn’t going to make it easy for him.

________________

Riz has picked her a flower. It’s a beautiful blue thing and he did tell her the name but she doesn’t remember, just thanks him and kisses him on the cheek and tells him to get to acrobatics class. She places it in a jar of water, on the windowsill of her room, and slowly it withers, as flowers do when you pick them. It takes maybe a week to start turning brown, the petals going brittle as dry paper, and Sasha tells herself each day that she’ll throw it out. She doesn’t get round to it, just watches it decay until it is firmly, undeniably dead.

The next day it is fresh and alive again.

Sasha takes it out of the water and holds it carefully, staring at it. The stem is vibrant green, and under the limp dead flower is forming the first bud of a new bloom. She doesn’t understand. She asks Riz, and he doesn’t understand either. He just tells her that she must be looking after it better than she thought, and she agrees even though she knows that’s not true.

The cycle repeats. The flower dries out slowly, wilting and slumping until finally it is nothing but dead matter in the shape of a flower. And then, the next day, it’s back. Returned from the dead, Sasha thinks idly.

As if Hades himself is sending her flowers.

Death was never just flirting with her, she thinks as she holds the delicate flower in her hands. Death _loves_ her.

Maybe he fell in love with her after she died that first time in Paris, and since then he’s been mourning her, expecting her return. Maybe he’s just been waiting for her all along, watching her inch closer to death ever since she was born, and the twists and turns in her path are his way of... of what, exactly? Of marking her as special? Is he gifting her life, or is he stealing moments of death to spend with her? Whichever way it is Hades wants her to notice him. To think of him. To feel comfortable with him, before she finally goes home to him.

She starts to talk to him, every time he sends the flower back. It’s not a proper prayer, not like Azu or Grizzop would do, but she doesn’t get angry at him either, like Zolf would with Poseidon. She just…. talks. She thanks him for the gift, usually, but reminds him that she’s not going to come to him any quicker just because he sends flowers. She always wants to ask after people she knows, but she doesn’t know any of his faithful just yet. Once she started to ask after her kids’ parents, but she never found out their names.

She has the feeling that someone’s there, but they never reply. There’s never any magic the way Grizzop and Zolf and Azu could conjure, nothing glows or gets warm, but nonetheless Sasha feels listened to. Like there’s someone in the room, always out of her line of sight, but always paying attention. Why the hell he would care what she has to say, that’s a bit beyond her, but it doesn’t feel _unlike_ being loved by a god. It’s nice, to talk and feel listened, so she keeps doing it.

She never tries to stay awake and watch the flower revive. That feels like breaking an unspoken rule. She isn’t supposed to see him before her time, and that’s okay. But just once, she falls asleep with a dead flower on her windowsill and wakes in the middle of the night to see moonlight illuminating a fresh bloom. She almost thinks she sees the tips of dry leaves unfurling into new life.

Behind it, outside the window, the clouds roll and churn. Sasha smiles, rolls over, and goes back to sleep.

__________________

Sasha wakes up and she knows it’s coming. Her bones have ached for years now, they have carried her for so, _so_ long, but today they’re heavy with finality. She understands.

Most of her children are gone now, away from the farm and living their own lives, as children are supposed to do. Amidus brings the twins back now and again to visit her. Of course, it’s sad that they won’t see their Ava again, but Amidus will take care of them – he always has. Bertus and Azus both come by from time to time as well, but Sasha knows they won’t be coming today. Sagax is far away these days, but he writes fairly regularly. Sasha wonders if she should write him one last time, but there’s nothing left to say.

Riz and Wilde are still here.

The goodbyes are tearful and difficult, done over breakfast. Riz’s hair is sticking up at a ridiculous angle through the whole ordeal, and Wilde looks like she might think she’s dreaming, like she could go back to bed and when she got up again this would all just not be happening. Sasha is understanding, but firm. She loves them dearly, she trusts them to look after the farm, and she’s sorry she has to go. But she wants to go alone. She tells then where she’ll be, and says they can come to collect her at sundown. By then, it’ll all be over.

And then she sets out. Her home is in the bottom of the valley but she’s got used to the sight of the open sky these days, so she climbs to the top of the hill with no fear of the huge, empty spaces between her and the horizon. The pain and stiffness in her body ease, just a little, as if to give her a reprieve for her final journey.

At the top of the hill she sits down. The grass is cool and tickles her legs. From up here, she can almost see the ruined, parched lands where Rome once stood. If she squints, she thinks for a moment she sees the corrupted magic like a heat haze in the air. In a few thousand years it’ll still be there – and she will be there too, with her friends, battling through those wastes together. The thought is bizarre, but comforting.

She watches the shadows move below her as the sun makes its way across the sky. The late afternoon is warm and bright. She’d never thought it would end like this – she’d always assumed it would be painful. At knife point, probably. There was a time, a lifetime ago (and even further in the future) that she’d have thought a death like this was useless. Grizzop would have agreed with her. What’s the point of dying, he’d have said, if you don’t die trying to achieve something?

Well, that’s the point. Sasha has achieved everything she wants to. She’s earned this peace. This rest.

Sundown is fast approaching, and Sasha’s eyelids flutter heavily as she finds herself getting drowsy. For a moment they sink closed, and then she opens them quickly and lifts her gaze to the sky in an effort to keep herself awake.

Something moves amongst the clouds. It looks like a huge hand.

Sasha remembers Grizzop describing a hand, colossal and terrifying, trying to swat them aside like flies as they fell between dimensions.

This time, the hand is not violent. It plucks her up gently, like a flower it wants to pick, but not destroy. Sasha finds herself standing in its enormous palm, looking up in a vain attempt to see who it’s attached to.

She doesn’t see a face, but she hears a voice. “Sasha,” it says fondly. It is a deep, rumbling voice, and she feels the bass in her ribcage. “You come to me at last.”

Sasha grins, and looks up at the face she can’t see. “Gave you a fair run around, though, didn’t I?”

The voice chuckles. “That you did, my child. But now, let’s go home.”


End file.
